Epistemological shifts, power imbalances and conflicts at documenta fifteen: decolonial cultural policy conceptions beyond Eurocentric universalism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Focusing on the epistemic dimension of exclusionary institutional structures in the German cultural sector in relation to cultural production, this article searches for decolonial cultural policy conceptions that are critical of knowledge-related power imbalances and their entanglements. By taking the international art exhibition documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022 as a case study, the paper examines the community- and collectivity-based practices and methodologies introduced by the Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa. In particular, this empirically grounded inquiry focuses on ruangrupa’s lumbung values as a proposition of epistemic pluriversality. In this way, it also reveals various conflicts that occurred before and during the fifteenth edition of the exhibition, arisen from epistemological differences in perspectives, narratives, aesthetics and artistic methodologies between colonial and capitalism-critical cultural practices and Western art institutions. Following the tenets of the decolonial turn and decolonial thought, the paper explores alternatives to the dominant Eurocentric universalism of knowledge through the example of documenta fifteen, transcending the binary of either/or and advocating pluriversality as a universal option, rather than Eurocentric universalism as a singular totality, as proposed by Walter Mignolo. Following Catherine Walsh, the quest for the recognition and dissemination of pluriversal perspectives is intrinsically linked to the search for other ways of knowing, thinking, theorising and being that resist totalising power. In doing so, the authors ultimately seek to outline some attributes of decolonial conceptions of cultural policymaking, aiming at reducing epistemological inequalities in accessing cultural production for marginalised and racialised artists and cultural practitioners.